Category: News

Time for the last tournament of the year is approaching! It will start at 09:00 UTC on 2014-12-20 and registration will be open until December 19 23:59 UTC. The current time in UTC can be seen at http://utctime.org/.

Players of all skill levels are welcome and encouraged to participate.

Tournament rules:
– Teams contain two different human players
– Single elimination
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 or team game map pool.
– Finals are best of 5, all other matches including the bronze match are best of 3.

The tournament bracket will be seeded according to players’ teams Elo after registration closes. The players in the teams coming first, second and third will receive 75, 50 and 25 kudos respectively. Please note that it is likely kudos prizes will not be given out for monthly tournament results next year. Make sure to use this last chance!

The first map of each round will be:
Round 1: Intersection_v3
Round 2: Altair_crossing_v3
Round 3: Desert Needle Small 3.1
Bronze match: Into Battle_v3
Finals: Eye_Of_Horus_v2

Check out the bracket at http://zk.challonge.com/zkdec2014

Sign up in the comments!

December’s first and Parzival‘s second tourney is to be held this Saturday, at 17:00 UTC, in 2v2 Swiss format.

You can read up on the rules and sign up here.

Reef arguably had the worst model in ZK and in this version it has finally received a remodel. This comes with some gameplay changes and an impressive hanger construction system. RyMarq continues to refine sea balance and Hovercraft have received some small nerfs after a long period of feedback. Sumo now has gravity guns because it was insufficiently awesome.

In other news; work on the lobby is ongoing and benchmarks have helped create some improvements to performance on the new engine. We may be ready for another community benchmark in a few weeks in order to test the effectiveness of the changes.

=== Gameplay ===
Reef:
* New model by lordmuffe and Anarchid.
* Has less airpads, 9 -> 2.
* Has more hangers to build 4 drones simultaneously.

Mace less maneuverable:
* Range: 355 -> 345
* 25% less acceleration.
* 35% less brake rate.
* 35% less turn rate.

Dagger:
* Range: 220 -> 205

Sumo:
* Disruptor beams replaced with standard Newton gravity guns.

Surfboard:
* HP: 1100 -> 1200
* Speed: 3 -> 3.3
* Turn rate: 540 -> 590

Enforcer:
* Turn rate: 210 -> 230
* Weapon homing: 2000 -> 2100

Serpent:
* Turn rate: 220 -> 250.

Sonar Station is now long-ranged and heavier:
* Cost: 40 -> 450
* LoS: 500 -> 640
* Sonar: 600 -> 1800
* HP: 300 -> 800
* Upkeep: 0.5 -> 1.5

* Shield link transfer and Puppy goo obey Slow.
* Removed sonar from Scalpel and Advanced Radar Tower.
* Slasher is skirmished by artillery.
* Slasher has skirmish behaviour (disabled by default).

=== UI ===
* Minimap fades on zoomout with COFC.
* Added neutral unit display toggle for show all commands.
* Map Extension default texture brightness lowered, makes identifying what the extension is easier.
* Removed the redundant “unit unlocks” modoption.
* Widgets now have access to a few more unit parameters; jump, dynamic damage, morph, capture, area cloak, unit rank, teleporters, goo, missile flight time, explosion spawning, being a drone, combat slowdown, shield gun, speed boost.
* Context Menu now shows LoS.
* Improved the COFC bounds issues, especially for low FOV
* Deluxe player list: Elo rounding 50 -> 10. Fixed padding.
* Configuration of the Fog of War colour is now more sensible.
* Selection menu opacity is now configurable.
* Added a new potential resource display widget; Chili Economy Panel v2.

=== Bugfixes ===
* Skuttle, Strider Hub and Caretaker now leave wreckage.
* Fixed jumping units’ wreckage receiving excessive momentum on death.
* Fixed LUPS thrusters bug.
* Fixed context menu crash.

=== Misc ===
* Plopped factories and commanders make a teleporting sound.
* Metalmap fix for RustyDelta_Final.

The time has come to host a new tournament!

This is going to be the second 1v1 tournament in this month, after the unfortunately under-advertised one hosted by Parzival. Hopefully we could do two sets in December as well 🙂

The tournament will start on the 29th at 09:00 UTC and registration will be open until November 28th 23:59 UTC. As usual, keep in mind to take into accout daylight saving time. Current time in UTC can be seen here: http://utctime.org/

Additionally, players can volunteer to substitute for anyone missing after the registration has been closed and before tourney itself starts. Substitutes will be used if the original signed-up players fail to arrive within 30 minutes of start without notice, in order of sign-up, based on this thread.

Players of all skill levels are welcome to take part.

Tournament rules:
– Single elimination
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– Finals are best of 5, all other matches including the bronze match are best of 3.

The tournament bracket will be seeded according to players’ 1v1 Elo after registration closes. The players coming first, second and third will receive 75, 50 and 25 kudos respectively. The starting maps for each round will be announced at some later date before the tournament starts, when the number of participants will be more or less known.

Bracket can be seen here: http://zk.challonge.com/zk_1v1_november_2014

To sign up, join the tournament on Challonge, or simply leave a post in the appropriate forum thread. Don’t forget to show up on time!

This release includes a lot of bugfixes and some changes to UI. Experience based morphs are removed, and several gameplay mechanics are made more consistent.

Zombies
This night, dead shall walk again! Wreckage left unattended for too long will self-resurrect and become hostile to anyone around.

Gameplay
Removed XP morphs.
Bombers have to rearm before repair pads repair them.
Naked Recon Comm no longer transportable by Valkyrie
Inaccuracy no longer reduced by experience
Planet Wars structures no longer flatten ground on spawn
Stockpile and Morph obey slow and disarm
Experience gain simplified
Wrecks of jumping units now keep momentum and continue inertially
Default comm is Strike Trainer instead of Junior
Lamp will no longer be fired upon unless ordered to

Commander Autorepair module now works on out of combat regeneration (10s after last received damage), replacing the default out of combat regeneration

Time to wait for disconnected players: 75 s -> 150 s

Time before default comm spawns: 30 s -> 15 s

Land units speed loss with depth per height: 10% -> 7%
Grizzly: LoS 605 -> 660
Scalpel: LoS 484 -> 495
Radar: HP 81 -> 80
Sneaky Peet: HP 712 -> 700

UI

Economy Panel is now the default resource bar.
Added Supreme Commander style camera to COFC. This is the default setup for COFC.
Added AZERTY layout option to KB Menu.
Added SI system option to Context Menu
Added victory counter
Added the option to set camera movement smoothness
Context Menu now shows Disarm, and AoE for crawling bombs
Economy Panel made larger and its text more readable
Fac Panel changed to be able to also show ally factory queues, and to show and modify construction order
Some old helptexts updated
Chat now shows cheating, desync, speed change and resign
Widgets now have read access to more unit parameters
Polish helptext translation for campaign commanders
Russian translations added

Bug fixes

Long-burn Napalm increases the burn time correctly for High Caliber Napalm Artillery
Context Menu now shows EMP damage correctly, and no longer shows fake weapons
Unit Start State widget now able to set unit retreat state to “Off”
DRP napalm and Pyro death now apply afterburn correctly
Fix one enemy color looking green
Sharing cloaked units now changes the cloak effect colour
Context Menu now shows Archer damage properly
Venom EMP obeys armor. Obedience is the correct behaviour.
Support Commander levels 2/3/4 now show the correct BP in tooltip
Placeholder no longer has instant self-destruction
Disarmed mexes now animate properly
Air transports will now unload Skuttle and Tick correctly
Grizzly no longer crashes when inserting its weapon into enemy hitbox
Lightning visual effect now lasts correctly with newest engine
Units will now fire at Stardusts placed on cliffs correctly.
Air pads no longer drain energy when disabled
Crude Player List now handles duels on FFA maps properly
Fixed wrong EMP-to-Disarm damage conversion